Wildlife Holidays Worldwide Blog: Staff Trip Report: 3 - Chris Breen in Canada

Yesterday really was one of the most amazing days of wildlife viewing I have ever had, and having taken a real interest in wildlife 20 or so years ago, this is quite a claim.

We headed out from King Pacific yesterday morning at around 9am on what was a misty and quite cold morning. We were aiming for one of the bear-viewing platforms at Riordan on
Gribbell Island, and were off with high hopes and low expectations as Simon so aptly put it. But, I had a good feeling about the day (this can be a dangerous thing to have!).

We whizzed past a Humpback Whale, but of a shame not to stop, but we were on a mission, there were bears to see. At Riordan we disembarked the boat and walked the short distance to the platforms. As a group of 15 or so we were split between the two platforms. Having been a couple of times in the past, my personal preference is for the furthest platform. Although they are only about 75 metres apart, the furthest of the two platforms has a slightly clearer view, and in my experience the bears have tended to appear from upstream, and the furthest hide is best placed for this.

We waited for 30 minutes or so and, not surprisingly, there was nothing immediately obvious - no bears. Archie (our Git Ga'at guide) suggested that we walk off the platform and go to see if we could see Beavers on the nearby 'pond'. I have never seen Beavers (but have made various previous attempts to do so), so I wasn't really expecting to be successful. Of course as we walked up to the pond there was one huge Beaver sat by the water just watching us. This was a good start, but it got better as we were treated to quite a display over the course of the next 30 minutes or so, not just from this Beaver, but from two others as well.

Back to the platform and 10 minutes later there was a Pine Marten.

Marven (the principal Git Ga'at guide) was chatting to us on the stand about bears, Black Bears and Spirit Bears, and without changing the pace of conversation said - "there's a Black Bear". All binoculars and cameras were focussed on the Black Bear, a particularly large one, that was working his way down stream towards us, fishing along the way. Good so far, but no Spirit Bears - but that was no problem as Marven said that in previous days the Spirit Bear hasn't appeared until much later in the day (that is, on the days that the Spirit Bear has appeared).

"There's a white bear", says Marven, "do you know, he has just been sleeping there and we didn't seen him, I think he must have just got up, I don't know how long he has been there". Just on the other side of the platform, in fact between the two platforms, a large Spirit Bear had clearly been asleep by the side of the river, just out of view. The attention and cameras immediately moved away from the Black Bear and over to the Spirit Bear. This most beautiful ginger-white bear was at this point no more than 30 metres away from us to our left, and a Black Bear no more than 30 metres away from us to our right. Once the excitement had settled (which took while!) - it was difficult to know where to turn!

Neither of the bears was at all concerned with our presence, and both spent the next three and a half hours fishing in front of us. The Spirit Bear (now known as Elvis as he has a twitch in his right lip) walked the river, searching for salmon and hauling them out, the Black Bear on the other hand found himself a shady spot on the river and, standing still, positioned his head to see into the river and then waited, patiently for the right salmon to appear and come close enough, before he just lifted it out and ate it. He pulled out quite a few over the course of the afternoon, and after eating each one, he returned to his favourite spot and just waited until the next really tasty salmon came along.

I was able to climb off the platform at one point and just sit under it (with our guide), the Spirit Bear walked within two metres of me, caught a fish, and then sat on log and ate it - perhaps three metres away from me. Isn't this what wildlife viewing is all about?

It really couldn't get any better than this… A female Black Bear appeared, with a most ridiculous method of hunting… sort of trying to bounce on the fish. It didn't really work, so she had to resort to eating the scraps that the other bears had left behind. The larger Black Bear took umbrage to the Spirit Bear being so close and chased him up river, and we simply got to a point in the day when we had to leave.

The sun came out and we headed off back to Barnhard Harbour and King Pacific- the days wildlife viewing concluded with Humpback Whales at various stages of the journey back - five in all.

It is virtually impossible to express in words what an amazing day this was - hopefully the photos will help to put this into perspective.